dancing tower shapes mona hatoum’s fondazione prada exhibition

Mona Hatoum’s exhibition at fondazione prada milan

Mona Hatoum brings a constellation of hand-blown glass spheres and a motorized metal tower sculpture to her exhibition at Fondazione Prada in Milan. Named ‘Over, under, and in between,’ the site-specific project is on view from January 29th to November 9th, 2026, divided into three parts comprising a web, a map, and a grid. These installations find a temporary home in the reactivated Cisterna building, once located on Fondazione Prada’s compound and which housed the silos and tanks of a former alcohol distillery. The space accommodates the height, volume, and shape of the three large-scale installations, enveloping the viewers in a physical spatial experience.

When visitors enter the Cisterna building at Fondazione Prada, they find delicate, transparent, hand-blown glass spheres suspended above their heads. They form the shape of a spider’s web, a recurring theme in Mona Hatoum’s repertoire, as a means for her to delve into the topics of familiar ties and connectedness as well as entrapment, idleness, and neglect. For the artist, a web can provide a home or a safe place, but it can also suggest entrapment. ‘To me, the large web overhead also has poetic, even cosmic significance. The beautiful, delicate glass spheres are an apt reference to dew drops, evoking their fragility and sparkling quality. They also resemble a celestial constellation. I personally like to see it as an allusion to the interconnectedness of all things,’ says Mona Hatoum.

all images courtesy of Fondazione Prada | photos by Roberto Marossi, unless stated otherwise

Glass and metal installations in ‘Over, under, and in between’

In the central room of the exhibition space, Mona Hatoum covers the concrete floor with translucent red glass balls arranged in the shape of a world map. These spheres are carefully arranged but without borders, the artist hinting at the absence of any political and geographical barriers aside from underlining the continents. More than 30,000 spheres may roll around, as they’re not fixed in place. It’s their identity of being a loose and undefined territory, one that Mona Hatoum desires to highlight in her Fondazione Prada exhibition in Milan. She also makes a subtle reference to the Gall-Peters projection map, which renders Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia disproportionately smaller than their actual size, alluding to the political power and its dynamics across the world.

The last installation, a kinetic metal structure, ends the exhibition of Mona Hatoum at Fondazione Prada in Milan. Nine levels of open, stacked cubes form the gridded metallic structure, which mimics scaffolding or the skeleton of a building. At first, it rests on the floor, feigning immobility. Soon, viewers see it dance, oscillating between downward collapse and re-erection using installed motors. The sounds of creaking and clanking accompany the sways and zigzags of the structure as it moves like a human body, bending and rotating. Once it reaches a certain level, it returns to its original 8.6-meter-tall height, ending its performance. For the artist, the open cubes gesture to unease, claustrophobia, and a sense of no escape. The installation embraces an endless sensation of opposing human conditions, standing tall first before it slowly collapses then reforms back. Mona Hatoum’s Over, under, and in between exhibition at Fondazione Prada in Milan remains on-site until November 9th, 2026.

the kinetic metal structure ends the exhibition